Updates from Europe. Click on "Europe" tag above for all news about the region. Click here for regional Green ICT updates from around the globe.

2015

Apple announced in February 2015 that its two new European data centers would "...will have the lowest environmental impact yet for an Apple data centre." The company explains, " ...the new facilities will run entirely on clean, renewable energy sources from day one...in Athenry, Ireland, Apple will recover land previously used for growing and harvesting non-native trees and restore native trees to Derrydonnell Forest...In Viborg, Denmark, Apple will eliminate the need for additional generators by locating the data centre adjacent to one of Denmark’s largest electrical substations. The facility is also designed to capture excess heat from equipment inside the facility and conduct it into the district heating system to help warm homes in the neighboring community." Wind will be the primary renewable energy source for the facilities, scheduled to be operational in 2017. More: Apple and Green ICT

Cloud computing has the potential to significantly advance Green ICT. Cloud computing can be greener than in-house data centers for many small and medium companies. Yet many of the wasteful practices that result in unnecessary resource consumption and toxic emissions in traditional ICT are now finding there way into cloud utilization.

A 2010 version of this post was titled "No One Can Agree on Typical PUE". I wrote, "As more data centers measure their PUE, managers ask what is typical? The industry does not seem to agree, so a wide range of numbers is out there." I updated the post in 2012 with the latest data, concluding that most data centers still appear to be operating above a PUE of 2.0."

I put the question to Vertatique's global Green ICT community in August 2013 via a tweet: "After years of #GreenICT, is there evidence that most #datacenters now operate below PUE 2.0?". This was one of our most-retweeted, but no one came forward with new evidence. Some replied in the emphatic negative.

Three years of very enlightening survey results from Digital Realty, including the 2014 data, confirm that the 2012 analysis. The only lower (better) average PUE came from Microsoft.

The number of Green ICT conferences continue to rebound after an earlier decline. The most recent quarter was driven by a surge in North American conferences.to a level we have not seen since Q2 2013.

The original directory of upcoming and past Green IT conferences is now the Green ICT Conference Directory. We did this because of the increasing number that include or focus on sustainability in communications.

Liquid cooling was once a staple of large-scale computing, but has largely been replaced by air cooling. We identified several efforts to bring liquid cooling to the server world in our first version of this post in 2012 and have seen continuous progress since. Here is the latest news.

We have been covering the use of datacenter waste heat to warm facilities from municipal buildings to swimming pools since 2009. That led to coverage of a 2011 Microsoft research idea for how individual servers might become 'data furnances'. That original post with excerpts from the researchers' publication is available below.

Two European companies have now brought the idea to market. One explains the concept with a video.

Green ICT is serious business, but it does not have to be solemn. We periodically take a look at the humorous and the quirky and, in this post, Green ICT-themed art and crafts. The most recent pieces are e-waste craft projects.

Updates from Asia-Pacific. Click here for regional Green ICT updates from around the globe. Click on 'Asia-Pac' tag above for all news about the region. (Information about the ICT implications of Japan's earthquake and tsunami have been moved to its own post.) Our latest item looks at how China will be driving global datacenter growth through 2018.

We've been tracking the growth in mega-datacenters since 2009. These faculties feature technical and operational innovation that has overturned previous notions of limits on energy efficiency. But does the focus on efficiency obscure an acceleration in ICT energy and water consumption and in CO2e production? While mega-data center operators are claiming exceptional power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratios, we're still talking about facilities that consume 20-200 MW apiece and emit a considerable carbon footprint unless powered by renewable energy. Here's our most look recent mega-datacenter issues, including new statistics that suggest the mega-datacenter boom will cause a decrease in the total number of facilities.